Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Kelly's Book 7.12: Double Fold

Dear Jenny,

I'm nervous about getting through this one. While I love Nicholson Baker, I remember starting this book once before and not being able to get into it. It's a non-fiction book about the fact that we, as a country, have scanned our newspaper archives onto microfilm and destroyed the originals.

Which, I'll admit, doesn't sound like a great idea (microfilm? that crap?). But... does it merit a whole book's worth of discourse? Not so sure. Also, there are a buttload of endnotes, which is going to make me unhappy.

And... it was written in 2001. Sooo ... I'm not really sure how topical it is at this point. Is anyone still using microfilm?

Of course, if we've destroyed the originals, there's no way to re-scan now with better technology. I'm going to guess that's part of Baker's point. We'll see.

2 comments:

Hmmm. I can see the problems with this one, but I'll be curious to see how it turns out. Just today in class I was teaching about Cassandra...maybe he'll end up being so eerily accurate in his predictions that you'll find it fascinating!

Speaking of squirm-inducing, have you heard about his latest book? It's called House of Holes and came out sometime last year. Apparently, it is *beyond* profane. I'd steer clear if I were you.